The present invention relates to a rail vehicle, i.e. a vehicle that travels on the rails, and, more particularly, to a streetcar or a metropolitan transit car for local traffic, in which a car body and an undercarriage are connected with each other by means of at least one guide rod extending in a longitudinal direction.
The word "undercarriage" herein means driven and non-driven undercarriages with two or four wheels, which are connected pair-wise by means of a wheel shaft or which are free wheels, as well as drive bogies, trailing bodies and/or driven carriages.
Many different streetcars and metropolitan transit cars in six or eight axle embodiments are known in practice and from the professional literature. Usually a driven undercarriage is located under the head portion of the car body in this type of car, so that at least one non-driven undercarriage can be located in a middle region of the car. In order to prevent one-sided wheel wear, which is especially common with travel in one direction, the undercarriage is reversed or turned around after traveling, for example, 80,000 km or about once per year. Also the driven undercarriage can be released from its place at the head region of the car body and mounted under the other head region after being rotated about 180.degree.. No greater difficulties are encountered in assembling the guide rods and other mechanically and electrically interfacial parts during the above-described reversal of the driving undercarriage because of the symmetry of the car body shape.
Subway vehicles formed from passenger-containing modules and undercarriage modules, which each have a car body and an undercarriage connected with each other by at least one guide rod extending in a longitudinal direction, are part of the state of the art as seen, for example, from the journal "Der Nahverkehr (Local Transit)", pp. 79 to 82, 10/95. FIG. 4 on page 81 of this journal shows a drive undercarriage with a guide rod of a guide rod pair, in which the opposite guide rod is covered by the undercarriage frame in the view. This FIG. 4 also shows a transverse shock absorber, which effects the transverse motion of the car body relative to the undercarriage, which is usually limited by an unshown mechanical stop device.